[WikiEN-l] "Other Perspectives"
Sj
2.718281828 at gmail.com
Wed Sep 22 22:44:21 UTC 2004
Including side-notes about every well-known controversial opinion can
clutter up an article and detract from its usefulness. "The Earth is
generally accepted to be a spheroid with average radius 6360 km. The
[[flat-earthers]] think it is a flat plane, but debate whether it
circular, square, or has edges at all. Some flat-earthers think that
both sides of a flat earth are inhabited."
It might be appropriate to start a custom of having a section titled
"Other Perspectives" or some such at the end of an article, before the
references and see-alsos. The body of the article can then present
accepted collective understanding of a subject, which most readers
will expect to find in a respectable resource, while allowing space to
note controversial or popular fringe view. References to that section
could be made from the rest of the text.
[To this end, and for other reasons, it would be nice to
auto-generate footnotes...]
For instance, one might write: [with autogenerated footnotes]
"Famous impossible constructions include trisecting the
angle[[Footnote:#Other perspectives]] and squaring the circle."
==Other perspectives==
There are a number of amateur mathematicians, known to others in the
field as 'angle trisectors', who continue to work on constructions for
trisecting an angle, disbelieving a long-standing (and
three-page-long) proof that this is impossible. They are infamous for
the persistence of their correspondence with any mathematician willing
to review their constructions.
--
+sj+
More information about the WikiEN-l
mailing list